


Pray for the Wicked

by uaevuon



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: 1969, Alternate Universe - Historical, Background Relationships, Crossdressing, Dancing, Gen, M/M, Nonbinary Viktor Nikiforov, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Transphobia, Phichimetti, Queer History, Stonewall Riots, Trans Phichit Chulanont, conceptual, mari/isabella, mild violence, poly jjbella, throwing bricks at cops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 11:52:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15072572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uaevuon/pseuds/uaevuon
Summary: For YOI Pride Week.Stonewall riots AU. Drabbles written while listening to P!ATD's “Pray for the Wicked” album. Each section was written within the length of the song it’s named for.





	Pray for the Wicked

**Author's Note:**

> Background: P!ATD’s newest album (which came out the day before pride weekend this year) seems to contain an absolute flood of references to LGBT history, from the subtle to the overt. As someone who is very attached to recognizing, researching, and preserving queer history, seeing nods like that from a bi musician I’ve been following for years is really meaningful to me.
> 
> Concept: Stonewall AU. Drabbles written while listening to the “Pray for the Wicked” album. Each section was written within the length of the song it’s named for, give or take a few seconds to finish sentences.
> 
> Self-beta’d. Some dated queer terminology. 
> 
> Written for Yuri on Ice Pride Week. Contains elements from all the prompts, but I think the greatest focus in here is on building and preserving one’s community and safe space, so I’m posting it for day 5: Belonging.

**1\. (fuck a) silver lining**

New York was loud. 

New York was loud and terrifying and _perfect_. It was everything Yuuri wanted and more. It had the oceanside ports that reminded him of home, even though the view was nothing alike; the crowded streets that were so different from anything he was used to. The towering buildings, refracting silver sunlight. The stubborn, fearless birds and the stubborn, fearless people. 

The bars. 

 

**2\. say amen (saturday night)**

Yuuri had been in bars before, secretive holes-in-the-wall that one had to be invited to. Out of the way. Loud below ground but discrete outside. 

New York bars were nothing like this. 

They were an open secret. You could be turned away at the door if not trusted, but anyone could try. And as long as no-one did anything openly illegal, they’d be ignored, for a while. 

The line of dresses on the low stage were very, very illegal. But they didn’t go out that way. Yuuri got away with a yukata, a foreigner in his foreign robe. 

There was a _feeling_ in the air, a thrumming that dug deep into everyone’s bones. Something was going to happen tonight -- but something happened every Saturday night. 

 

**3\. hey look ma, i made it**

It had taken Yuuri so long to get here, to come halfway around the world; he was only a dancer, nothing special, but there were men hanging off him, touching his chest, his ass, feeling him up through the cotton, and underneath it, all in plain sight. It was terrifying, but it was exhilarating. 

Every once in a while, he thought back to his parents; how they’d encouraged him and Mari to leave, to pursue their dreams. Mari was here, too; across the room, smoking in a suit and tie, surrounded by beautiful women who’d shucked their shoes, tired of dancing. 

Yuuri, in the middle of the room, tipsy and pressed up between unknown men, the sweat on their bodies sticking them together. 

Hiroko and Toshiya would be proud to see their children happy, even if they didn’t completely understand. 

 

**4\. high hopes**

This was what Yuuri had wanted when he left. More than the chance at dancing in front of millions, it was the chance at dancing for himself, loving himself, if only for a few hours each Saturday. 

The man behind him - tall, with bright hair, in a pink blouse soaked through with sweat and shorts that barely covered more than his thong; Yuuri’s fingers caught in the delicate strap at his hip. 

The man at his right - a reserved but beautiful face and a ruffled shirt in every color of the rainbow. 

The man at his left - who whispered about his wife, pointed her out draped over Mari’s lap in the low light, the forever-pair of them wanting each other and wanting more. 

The man in front of him - his roommate, lithe and beautiful; living his days as a woman and living his truth here, at night. His arms around a man who towered over them all, with two-toned hair and an ass sculpted by the gods.

 

**5\. roaring 20’s**

The blaring of saxophones almost drowned out a crash of glass at the bar; shouts that sounded like joy, rolling in waves. Yuuri’s heart hammered; his fingers fisted in the vintage ribbon around the throat of the man at his back, whose arms came around his waist, his nose rubbing at Yuuri’s throat. He’d claimed this one for himself for tonight, and the teeth at his pulse claimed him right back. 

The shouts at the bar turned louder; turned to screams. The lights went out. 

Yuuri’s bubble burst; he looked to the corner, couldn’t see as far as where Mari had reclined on her chosen throne.

Suddenly there was shoving, and flashlights, and Yuuri’s heart in his throat, the stranger’s fingers digging into his hips. Joints stubbed out on the bartop. The stoic deejay flipping his spotlight to red. 

 

**6\. dancing’s not a crime**

Yuuri hit the sidewalk, palms-first; felt the raw scrape before he was dragged to his feet. He distantly saw a police van, lights on, and people stumbling into the back, pushed by uniforms. Shouting from those left on the street, barricaded in place. 

Like animals. 

Yuuri felt a rage like no other, and a fear in his throat when he caught Mari’s eye; she hadn’t been cuffed, but a cop was leading her to the van anyway. 

Yuuri saw red. They’d followed the law; Mari had her three pieces, and Yuuri was certain every other butch in that van did too. He worried about his roommate, who hid it all well, but was it enough?

Mari twisted, broke away, and was swallowed by the crowd as she vaulted over the barricade. 

Shouting, chanting, singing; the bright stranger still at his back, clutching his waist. A queen climbing a lamppost, and glass shattering. The open secret, their safe place, gutted by their own bricks; then fire, bottles of liquor set alight. 

 

**7\. one of the drunks**

Yuuri joined in, filling cracked bottles on the sidewalk with a half-shot of clear drink from his partner’s hip flask. Let the nearest smoker set them alight and throw. 

This wasn’t what Yuuri wanted from New York. But he’d _found_ that freedom here, if only for a night, and he would fight for what he’d fallen in love with. 

A hand pushed into the folds of his yukata; digits on the back of a beer label pushed into the waistband of his briefs. The bright-haired man nibbling at his ear. 

“Viktor,” the stranger whispered. 

Yuuri whispered his own name back, and they were strangers no more. 

“Find me.” 

Yuuri felt his Viktor break off, and reached for him, but his fingers touched only air. Viktor shimmied up a lamppost, given a leg up by two butches in waistcoats. He shouted with them and with the queens who had already climbed to height. Threw bricks handed up to him like he’d done it a million times. 

 

**8\. the overpass**

Three nights, the crowd returned. Three nights, the cops returned. Three nights, lit up and shouted alive. _You won’t take this from us_. 

Three mornings, Yuuri and Phichit snuck away, through back alleys and fire escapes. Shed their skins in their miniature apartment, lived their lies with bags under their eyes. 

Three months before Yuuri found the beer label again. 

When quiet settled, when the mark was made, Yuuri found his bright star again, his Viktor. An apartment backing up to the train tracks. 

He followed up on his claim. 

 

**9\. king of the clouds**

A year later, the return; in daylight, the streets cleared for only a thousand risking everything. 

Yuuri’s hand clutched tight in that of his beautiful pink not-so-stranger. His sister up ahead, shouting from just behind the line of queens that drove them forward. 

For a few hours, Yuuri felt like a king. 

 

**10\. old fashioned**

Yuuri passed a bottle to Viktor. In the journalist’s private space, the studio with the peeling wallpaper, they held one another close, whispering about their naive youth to dust motes and vinyl, to skin and alcohol, to a chipped brick on Viktor’s desk. And an envelope, sealed and stamped, for Yuuri to drop at the post on his way home in the morning, if all went well. 

 

**11\. dying in l.a.**

“I’ve done it before,” Viktor whispered that lazy afternoon. He’d gone to California first (wondered aloud, now, why Yuuri had taken the long way ‘round the world). He’d defended their careful, quiet dance halls and secret theatres, defended their neon bars and glittering shows. Then he’d left the drag to the queens who knew themselves ladies, kept the blouses that ruffled at the chest and throat for the part of him that was more than a man. Left a part of himself behind to write in a new city that meant the world to him. Found a love to fill that hole in the man who wore a cotton robe to a bar, because it was the closest thing to a dress that Viktor had ever lifted. 

“Forever,” Yuuri whispered, later that night, tying a ribbon around Viktor’s finger. Tipsy, warm; in love. 


End file.
